Radahn - Tumblr Posts
Cant get it out of my mind that Miquella actually sent Malenia to kill Radahn to free the stars...
Like in Rannis quest-line both her, and her retainers are scrambling to find a way to get into Nokron, and they could only do that by getting Sellens help and she is the one who reveals that they need to kill Radahn to free Rannis fate.
Like holy shit even Ranni, with all her scheming and intelligence, even she didn't know that Radahn needed to die in order to move on with her plan BUT MIQUELLA DID KNOW THIS ENTIRE TIME.
What else does Miquella know???? And with him giving the Spirit Caller Bell to Ranni and Torrent to Melina all to pass off to you, Miquella probably knows so much of what's going on to a terrifying degree.
morgott and radahn fighting in the opening cut scene is still so funny to me. imagine being radahn and attempting to invade the capital who seemingly has no ruler at the moment and some dude in rags jumps you with his own walking stick.
This was a bolt of inspiration and I shan't be apologizing....
I’d assume the reason she went to Caelid is because that’s where Radahn was based - he has Redmane forts there and Sellia. I’m sure he laid siege to other places in TLB at various points but Caelid does seem to be his base of operations. The Godfrey angle is definitely apparent, when I got to the 2nd phase and saw Miquella climb onto his back I thought of Serosh immediately. I think the holding back the stars thing could be argued either way - if he changed his mind and didn’t want to become Miquella’s consort, maybe his reasoning for holding the stars (and fate) in stasis was to avoid that coming to fruition. I think I lean more towards that view personally
What are the subtle things you mentioned? I genuinely can’t think of any off the top of my head
can i have a little ramble about dlc lore/discourse without anyone getting mad
if we accept the idea that the radahn/miquella story was planned from the beginning, i feel like they purposely left out any mention of them interacting in the base game to avoid people figuring it out long before the DLC even dropped. because they know what we're like and the way people figure things out from the most tenuous things is impressive. but it seems to have had the unintended consequence of it feeling like a rug-pull rather than a welcome surprise by the community, because elden ring is a game that rewards you for exploring, for uncovering the tiniest hints to lore in item descriptions, coming to your own conclusions on the story. so to feel completely blind-sided in this way about main story characters that we've formed opinions on for years doesn't feel like it fits with the base game's ethos at all. i get the feeling that players feel played with ironically lol? i'm also not sure fromsoft have ever done anything like this in their games before, where they've brought back main characters from the base game as a final boss, so i think that's had an affect too.
yeah I actually don’t think this is a new thing they’ve come up with actually, I think it’s the delivery that hasn’t panned out the way they probably expected it to. I think they’re very intentional with their storytelling and placement of things so it wouldn’t surprise me if the lilies are there to signal some kind of connection between Radahn and Miquella, I think it just comes down to people associating Caelid more with Malenia rather than Radahn and assuming that’s probably why the lilies are there. Granted that doesn’t make a lot of sense when put under scrutiny but I think that’s probably a factor in why, if that was their intention with the lily placement, it was more or less brushed aside by players/lore hunters. I’m definitely gonna be looking out for more signs on my next playthrough though
can i have a little ramble about dlc lore/discourse without anyone getting mad
if we accept the idea that the radahn/miquella story was planned from the beginning, i feel like they purposely left out any mention of them interacting in the base game to avoid people figuring it out long before the DLC even dropped. because they know what we're like and the way people figure things out from the most tenuous things is impressive. but it seems to have had the unintended consequence of it feeling like a rug-pull rather than a welcome surprise by the community, because elden ring is a game that rewards you for exploring, for uncovering the tiniest hints to lore in item descriptions, coming to your own conclusions on the story. so to feel completely blind-sided in this way about main story characters that we've formed opinions on for years doesn't feel like it fits with the base game's ethos at all. i get the feeling that players feel played with ironically lol? i'm also not sure fromsoft have ever done anything like this in their games before, where they've brought back main characters from the base game as a final boss, so i think that's had an affect too.
Alright I have this theory about Miquella, Malenia and Trina that I need to float out there.
When we find her, Malenia specifically states that she was dreaming. She has in fact been dreaming.
I dreamt for so long. My flesh was dull gold... and my blood, rotted. Corpse after corpse, left in my wake as I awaited his return. ... Heed my words. I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella. And I have never known defeat.
It's hard to say whether or not Malenia was in communication with Miquella via dreams. I do think there's some meat to the theory that she split herself, however, very much the way Miquella and Marika did.
Malenia budded off daughters in Aeonia, and I think that in the same way Trina represents Miquella's love and Radagon might be Marika's sense of loyalty, Millicent could literally be Malenia's dignity.
There is something I must return to Malenia. The will that was once her own. The dignity, the sense of self, that allowed her to resist the call of the scarlet rot. The pride she abandoned, to meet Radahn's measure.
-Millicent
Considering how relatively willingly Malenia bloomed for us, I have to wonder if she did indeed literally lose her restraint.
And she had so many splits.
By the time we get to her, Malenia has rotted the entire Haligtree and she seems to be a hollow shell of herself, repeating who she is and what she stands for like a mantra until we make her desperate. She is frozen in time as that woman who bloomed in Caelid, I think, just a fragment made of raw determination to win at any cost.
It's also notable that the Scarlet Rot isn't just painful, it might actively cause nightmares.
Everything is as you said. Since inserting the needle, the scarlet rot has ceased to writhe. Even the nightmares have abated...
-Millicent
Malenia might've been experiencing Rot-induced nightmares for a few hundred years until we got to her.
Miquella's textual motivation for moving proverbial mountains all throughout his life was curing his sister. While he struggled to uproot it at the source, they did find several stopgap treatments: wearing Miquella's unalloyed gold, which conferred a limited amount of his own immunity onto the bearer; and the Sword Saint's flowing water techniques.
I think Trina, as Miquella's love and an aspect of his own affinity for forgetfulness/oblivion, might've become the saint of sleep specifically out of Miquella's urge to soothe his sister's unquiet dreams. She eventually expanded and gained more autonomy, moving on to the Cleanrot Knights, then the merchants and albinaurics. It's hard to say when the albinaurics were brought to her attention, but I think Miquella had a lot of dealings with Ranni, Rykard, and maybe even Iji.
(Side note: could the mirrorhelm have made Iji immune to Miquella's charm?)
Torrent's whistle in particular is delicate goldwork that I think is heavily implied to be Miquella's handiwork. Of the smiths and engineers in-game, I think Miquella's skill at making outright automail had to take at least some inspiration from Rykard's machinery, and a lot of the weapons associated with the Haligtree take inspiration from Carian weaponry. The Miquellan Knight's sword is basically a Carian sword with the glintstone switched out for Haligtree bloodstone amber. Why is that?
(Additional side note: I think Loretta might've been Radahn's teacher in the art of horsemanship and archery, considering she's the only other Carian character heavily associated with horses and archery. It'd provide a good reason for why her albinauric identity was a huge secret. And, once Radahn left for Sellia to learn gravity magic/get a new mentor, that gave her the free time she would need to champion the albinaurics and investigate the Haligtree.)
Either way, Trina would have had front row seats to the treatment of the albinaurics as servants and worse, and there's a chance that that was when she had her first encounter with the Flame of Frenzy.
Miquella's approach to excising gods was scientific, but I think Trina attacked the problem from an ideological angle. It's actually a pretty good idea, since the gods in Elden Ring seem to be ideologies made physical. Frenzy is despair- so those afflicted with Frenzy must be given hope, and they were given a "holy land" in the form of the Haligtree. And we can in fact still find their hope in the Apostate Derelict, Philia's promise of being able to birth albinaurics, in very close proximity to the largest amount of Trina's Lilies in the game.
Tl;dr: I think Trina is a saint of sleep specifically because Malenia was afflicted by Rot-nightmares, and Miquella wanted so badly to help her that he budded off an aspect of himself that could.
gotta say i didn’t expect wig snatched miquella to be canon
so miquella does open his eyes during the fight, but only when he orders his brother bride to nuke the tarnished.
also he dropped his wig.
Christian Angel Artorias vs Manus, Starscourge Radahn, Ranni the Witch, Malenia Blade of Miquella, Queen Marika The Eternal, Base Serpent Messmer The Impaler
wow theyre so cute, i hope nothing bad happens to them :)
Bro just finished elden ring
Where’s my ending where Radahn rides off happily into the sunset rot free with his horsey